A New Report Says the Rental Affordability Crisis Can Be Solved — Here's How
The United States is in the grip of a deep and worsening housing affordability crisis. Millions of renters across the country are struggling to keep up with rising costs, sacrificing other essential needs just to keep a roof over their heads. But a sweeping new report offers a rare dose of optimism: with the right strategies and sustained commitment, the rental affordability crisis could be solved within a single generation.
The report, titled Housing Affordability Toolkit: Housing Affordability Can Be Solved in This Generation, was authored by Matthew Kwatinetz from the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate and published jointly by the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) and NYU Urban Lab. It outlines a comprehensive set of policy and market-based strategies aimed at relieving the burden felt by tens of millions of American renters — and its findings deserve serious attention.
The Scale of the Problem: 22.4 Million Rent-Burdened Households
To understand why this report matters, it helps to grasp just how widespread the rental affordability crisis truly is. According to the toolkit, roughly one-third of all U.S. households rent their homes. Of those renter households, approximately half — a staggering 22.4 million — are considered "rent-burdened."
The term "rent-burdened" is defined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as spending more than 30% of household income on rent. When a household crosses that threshold, it typically means difficult trade-offs: less money for food, healthcare, transportation, childcare, and savings. For millions of Americans, this is not a temporary situation but a chronic, grinding reality.
The report does not treat these 22.4 million households as a single uniform group. Instead, it identifies two distinct affordability crises unfolding simultaneously, each with its own causes and requiring its own set of solutions.
Two Separate Crises Within the Same Problem
Crisis One: Chronic Undersupply of Housing
The first affordability crisis stems from a chronic and persistent undersupply of homes in certain housing markets. When there simply are not enough units to meet demand, rents rise — and they rise for everyone, including households with moderate to high incomes. This is the market-driven side of the affordability problem, and it is playing out in cities and suburbs across the country.
High demand paired with insufficient inventory pushes rents to levels that eat deeply into household budgets, even for those who earn reasonable wages. In this scenario, the problem is not purely about poverty — it is about a housing market that has failed to build enough homes to keep pace with population growth and shifting living patterns.
Crisis Two: Extremely Low-Income Households Without Subsidy
The second crisis is more structural and deeply rooted. A significant share of rent-burdened households are extremely low-income, and for these families and individuals, no amount of new private construction will make the market affordable on its own. As the report states plainly, there is a high share of extremely low-income households "for which no private housing will ever be affordable without some sort of subsidy."
This population requires targeted government intervention — whether through rental assistance programs, public housing investment, or other forms of direct subsidy. Market forces alone cannot solve this portion of the crisis, and any honest affordability strategy must acknowledge that reality.
Key Strategies to Solve the Rental Affordability Crisis
Rather than simply diagnosing the problem, the toolkit outlines actionable strategies for addressing both dimensions of the rental affordability crisis. These strategies fall into three broad categories.
1. Increasing Housing Supply
The report emphasizes that expanding the supply of housing is the cornerstone of any meaningful affordability solution. It recommends a three-step approach to achieving this:
- Unlocking dormant development: Many properties and parcels sit underdeveloped due to financial, regulatory, or bureaucratic obstacles. Removing those barriers can open up significant new housing capacity without requiring entirely new infrastructure.
- Creating incentives for preservation: Building new units is important, but so is keeping existing affordable units in the market. Incentives that encourage landlords and developers to maintain and preserve existing rental stock can prevent the further erosion of the affordable housing supply.
- Balancing existing economic forces: The housing market operates within a web of economic incentives and pressures. Policymakers and developers must work together to ensure those forces are pushing in the right direction — toward affordability rather than speculation and displacement.
The toolkit is clear on one sobering point: even maintaining the current level of housing availability requires continued development. If production falls below historical norms, the crisis will deepen regardless of other policy efforts.
2. Preserving Existing Affordable Units
New construction grabs headlines, but preservation is equally critical. The United States has a large inventory of older, naturally occurring affordable housing — units that are affordable not because of government programs but simply because of their age and condition. As these units deteriorate or get redeveloped into higher-end properties, the affordable inventory shrinks. Strategic preservation efforts can protect these units and the communities that depend on them.
3. Reducing Regulatory Barriers
Zoning laws, permitting requirements, and other regulatory frameworks can significantly slow or block housing development — especially the kinds of dense, multi-family housing that tend to be more affordable. The report calls for reducing unnecessary regulatory barriers that add cost and delay to housing production. Streamlining approvals, updating outdated zoning codes, and embracing higher-density development in appropriate areas are all part of this equation.
Why This Generation Has the Opportunity — and the Responsibility — to Act
The central message of the NMHC and NYU Urban Lab report is not just that the rental affordability crisis is solvable — it is that this generation has a unique window of opportunity to solve it. The tools exist. The research is clear. What has been lacking is the political will, coordination, and sustained investment needed to turn strategy into reality.
With 22.4 million households spending an outsized share of their income on rent, the human cost of inaction is enormous. Families forced to choose between rent and groceries, workers unable to live near their jobs, and communities fractured by displacement — these are not abstract statistics. They are the lived consequences of a housing market that has been allowed to fail millions of Americans for too long.
If policymakers, developers, advocates, and communities can align around the strategies outlined in this toolkit — increasing supply, preserving existing units, reducing regulatory obstacles, and supporting those who need direct assistance — there is a real path forward. The rental affordability crisis did not happen overnight, and it will not be solved overnight. But the report makes a compelling case that it can be solved, and that the work must begin now.